


(tell me whose side) you're on

by everythingFangirl



Series: so call me when the world looks bleak (dream smp oneshots) [6]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Dream Smp, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Plot Twists, back on my bullshit once again, i guess, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl
Summary: I saw the whole world, I saw everything. I saw knowledge, I saw power, I saw empires rise and fall… and then I fell with them.“I’m here to help out a friend.” The man hops down from his ledge with surprising grace and takes a step towards Tubbo. “I hear you’ve been having a bit of a demon problem lately.”“You know about Schlatt?”“Of course I do! Who doesn’t?” He leans forward and lowers his voice, almost conspiratorially. “You’re not the only people who he’s tried to mess with in the past.”
Relationships: Charlie Dalgleish & Jschlatt, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: so call me when the world looks bleak (dream smp oneshots) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966438
Comments: 24
Kudos: 213
Collections: Dream SMP Connected Storylines





	(tell me whose side) you're on

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the one year anniversary of [Minecraft, but every 5 minutes there's a natural disaster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dp8iKlbaRs), an iconic piece of media.
> 
> If you're here purely for the Dream SMP content, hello! Go watch Charlie Slimecicle's videos he is incredible :)
> 
> Title is from the song You're On by Madeon.

_The world was on fire._

_Their house was gone, the trees were gone, dark smoke blacked out the sky. In the place of everything he had ever known, everything he’d hoped could be a home again, there was a mountain that spewed out fire from the depths of hell itself -_

_A figure rose from the smoke. Eerie melodies filtered through the air, and it laughed, and the sound felt like it was going to tear him apart -_

_This wasn’t possible, they had killed ~~him~~ it, they had won, how was it still there -_

_There was no mercy in those eyes, in that grin, there was nothing they could do, he didn’t want to die -_

_He threw out his hands in front of him as a last-ditch effort to protect himself, screaming into the air, something, anything, to make it stop, please make it stop -_

_And something happened, and something changed, and something in the fabric of reality tore itself apart and stitched it back together -_

_And everything went white -_

~

Tubbo’s pickaxe shatters against the vein of iron ore. He sighs, reaching into his inventory for a replacement, only to find none there. Great. Fantastic.

He’s been mining for a few hours now, gone so far into the rock that it would take him inconveniently long to travel all the way back to get a new one. Maybe he’s been down here long enough, maybe he should just call it a day and head back… but the thought of having to face Wilbur’s (admittedly calmer, now, but he still can’t deny his unease around the man) ramblings, Tommy and Quackity’s newfound and incredibly loud chaos, Technoblade’s glare and the glint of light on his axe blade, still makes the thought of returning to Pogtopia a little more bitter than he thinks it should be.

But, still, he doesn’t have much of a choice now. Tubbo sighs again, takes one last futile look at his inventory, turns to walk back the way he came -

Freezes at the sound of a voice.

“Need a hand?”

It’s an unfamiliar one. The accent is more like a Dream SMP one than L’Manberg’s - nevermind, that isn’t really a relevant distinction anymore either way - but the point is, Tubbo doesn’t recognize it. And he’s fairly certain he’d been alone in the mine just a moment ago.

He turns, slowly.

There’s a man sitting on an outcropping of rock, smiling down at him. He looks completely ordinary, no armor and weapons in sight, just cargo shorts and a white shirt with three red hearts printed onto it. Tubbo holds out his torch, and the light shines on brown hair, glints on a pair of glasses.

He’s holding out two pickaxes, one of netherite and one of enchanted diamond. “Take your pick.”

Hesitantly, Tubbo takes a step forward. When the man doesn’t move, he takes another, and (somewhat against his better judgement), reaches out a hand. Only when his fingers have closed around the wooden handle of the netherite pick does he realize that had been a joke.

He laughs under his breath as he draws his hand back. “That’s funny. And thank you.”

“No problem!” The stranger leans back against the rock behind him, dropping the other pickaxe back into his inventory. “It’s only a minor issue.”

Tubbo laughs again, but a pickaxe and some puns aren’t exactly enough to explain the sudden appearance of a person he wasn’t even aware existed until just a minute ago. “Who are you?”

“I’m here to help out a friend.” The man hops down from his ledge with surprising grace and takes a step towards Tubbo. “I hear you’ve been having a bit of a demon problem lately.”

“You know about Schlatt?”

“Of course I do! Who doesn’t?” He leans forward and lowers his voice, almost conspiratorially. “You’re not the only people who he’s tried to mess with in the past.” When Tubbo’s eyes widen in surprise, the stranger leans back again, his grin widening. “You can’t let him pull the wool over your eyes, he’s not some undefeatable monster. I’ve taken him down before. I’m a bit of an expert in the field, you could say.”

“Was that a - nevermind. I appreciate the offer, but you can’t just walk in here and expect us to trust you, though. No offense, but I have no idea who you are, and, Wilbur especially, he’s been really paranoid lately.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Wilbur knows me, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“His track record with old friends hasn’t been very good, recently.”

The man only chuckles in response. “Like I said, don’t worry about it.” He grins once again, tossing something in Tubbo’s direction and almost hitting him in the face. His hands fly up at the last second to catch it: a round red apple.

“If you want my help, I’m looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.”

Tubbo can’t stop his laughter, then, and the man joins in a second later. It echoes through the cave, and, turning back to see his grin, Tubbo starts to think that he wouldn’t mind having him around after all.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“Slime. But please, call me Charlie.”

There’s a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. ~~Tubbo’s hit with a sudden and inexplicable wave of déjà vu.~~

~

_Even with the demon gone, the horrors didn’t stop._

_The world itself was fighting against them, now, every blade of grass and every block of stone, and all the worse because it was **his fault**._

_His fault. Not the demon’s, not the world’s, his. This… power, whatever it was that had saved their lives, had changed something in the world itself, thrown something completely out of place, and **he** was the one who had caused it. The thought weighed heavy on his mind even as they fought their way through hoards of hostile items day after day after day, and nothing, absolutely nothing he tried seemed to work in stopping this carnage._

_And then they found him._

_At the bottom of a ravine, accosted by hoards and hoards of those blocks. They’d thought he was just a man, at first, fighting back with nothing but his fists, his clothes torn and hair disheveled, but the closer they got the more they saw of the suit, the blood-red tie, those awful, awful horns -_

_They should have left him there. At the time, he wanted to, his friends begged him to, that creature had destroyed everything and laughed as they ran for their lives and he was nothing but a monster, just leave him there to rot like he deserves to -_

_He’d almost turned away when he heard the desperate call for help._

_Later, Charlie would try to find a million ways to justify what he did. The man was weak, he wasn’t a god anymore; Charlie wasn’t afraid of him anymore; more people had a higher chance of survival in this hellscape he’d created; he was the only person in the world who knew how this - this thing - this power worked, who could teach him, who could still fix everything._

_But the truth was, when Charlie looked into the god’s all too human eyes, he saw fear. The fear of loneliness, being left behind. And the fear of death. Such a human emotion. And in that moment, he felt… guilt? No, pity. He couldn’t bring himself to leave someone there to die, no matter who it was._

_So he reached out his hand._

_And the demon took it._

_After that, there was no going back._

~

Charlie splits ways with Tubbo about halfway back to Pogtopia, claiming to want to take a look around the server by himself. He disappears into a side tunnel after Tubbo gives him the general direction of spawn, his slight feeling of uneasiness still heavily outweighed by the laughter their conversations had brought him on the walk here. Slime's sense of humor was a little strange, but left Tubbo breathless with laughter nonetheless. The memory of that laughter carries Tubbo all the way back home, where he’s beckoned over by Tommy, helping Techno and Niki prepare a dinner of baked potatoes (what a big surprise). Carried right back into the conversation, it’s not until they’re all settled in a haphazard circle on the stone floor that he has a chance to catch Wilbur’s attention.

“Hey, by the way, I met someone new in the mines today.”

Tommy and Quackity are bantering again to one side, Techno and Niki carrying on a conversation on the other, but Wilbur’s gaze stays on him. “Who?”

“I think he must be new around here. He said he knows who you are, and that you’ve met before.”

Wilbur glances down for a moment, almost bitterly. “I’ve met a lot of people. Did they say their name?”

“Oh, yeah. He said it was Charlie? Or Slime?”

Wilbur’s eyes snap back to him. He just stares, mouth half-open, as if unable to form words.

“You okay, Will? Do you know who-”

Tubbo can’t exactly comprehend what happens next.

One moment, he’s in Pogtopia, baked potato in his hand and half-listening to Tommy’s laughter and Wilbur’s eyes boring into his, and then -

The ground falls away from under him, and the walls of the ravine disappear, and the sky and the grass -

And yelling, and the neighing of horses and the clatter of skeletons’ bones and the rush of a minecart’s rails and the hiss of a creeper and the bleating of about a hundred sheep, all at the same time, all at once, all _here_ , somehow, how, what, how, how,

The tangle of limbs and someone tripping over his feet and something pushing him against the side of a cow and the elbow of a zombie right in his stomach -

Someone’s hand closing around his wrist and pulling, and he goes along with it because what what what what the _fuck_ is going on -

At some point he can just about breathe again, and looks into the panicked eyes of Techno who’s got Tommy slung over one shoulder and his hands tugging the reins of someone’s horse, not his own, with Niki thrown across the saddle, and Wilbur right beside staring back, staring _up_ , and Tubbo follows his gaze -

Everything. Absolutely everything. Every cow, every pig, every sheep, every spider and every zombie and every creeper of the server, every single one, and boats and minecarts and items scattered on the ground of the spawn area, and Quackity struggling in the middle of a knot of mobs and Eret and Fundy scrabbling to get away and Ponk and Karl standing on top of a tree looking just as shocked as Tubbo thinks he must look now -

Techno’s mumbling something about commands and admins and OP and Dream, but Dream can’t have had anything to do with it, no, look, he’s got his axe embedded in the neck of a Drowned and he’s staring up -

And -

There.

A single figure, floating above the chaos, doubled over in laughter, tears of mirth dripping onto his glasses. Cargo shorts and the shirt, and it’s Charlie, but, what, how, how -

He reaches a hand down and someone grabs it from below, and with a tug Schlatt floats up beside him, his maniacal cackling echoing across the field and the mobs and the players and -

Charlie howls some nonsensical string of symbols and words, and clutches his stomach in another fit of laughter that crashes against Schlatt’s -

Someone’s tugging on the back of his shirt, and Tubbo turns, and he does the only thing he can think to do.

He runs.

Because what the hell just happened?

What the _hell_ have they accepted into their world now?

~

_He didn’t kill them._

_At first Charlie thought it was luck, or weakness, or that maybe they’d finally won against him, that he couldn’t hurt them anymore. Maybe at first it was one of them, or all of them, but…_

_After the third time the demon - it - **he** saves him from certain death, or the fifth time he offers help without only thinking about his own survival, or the seventh time they make a joke together and they laugh in unison -_

_After he teaches him what he knows and how to control this power he’s found, after **/tp @e Slimecicle** and he sees the havoc it wreaks and instead of the panic that had seized his heart the first time he just laughs and it sounds like that demon of the storm but he doesn’t care anymore -_

_After the fever dream this world was becoming and they’d stuck together through it all and they’d survived -_

_Charlie doesn’t quite know at which point Schlatt became his friend._

_With the threat of death worn off, things changed, eventually. They found others, old friends and new ones, stuck together, split apart once again. But that time had stuck with him. That need for chaos had stuck with him._

_So when you hear of an old friend, losing power, losing allies, needing help…_

_What kind of friend would you be if you didn’t lend a hand?_

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, the next work in this series, "ashen sky, lightning storms," is a direct follow-up to this fic, featuring some more familiar faces. Go read it if you'd like to!


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